[11743] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: "The New Information Profession", Ch. 2 -- Allies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Thu Oct 16 20:38:34 1997
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:07:00 -0500
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
FYI France: "The New Information Profession", Ch. 2 -- Allies
* New at the FYI France Online Service: Print Libraries in France, 33 new
entries; Digital Libraries, 1 new entry; Book Dealers, 2 new entries;
Calendar, 6 new entries -- Venez nous visiter at http://www.fyifrance.com
The New Information Profession: a "digital book"
by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us
(This is a continuation of the text begun in the FYI France issue of May
15, available online in ASCII to subscribers at,
http://www.fyifrance.com/restricted/Fyarch/fy970515.htm
and -- as soon as I can get it done, I promise -- to everyone in HTML at,
i.e., http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi91401.htm )
Chapter 2: Allies -- who is doing what, now
The Information Profession which currently is in operation, helping people
to find and use digital information, consists of a loose alliance of
existing professions, supplemented by a vast and growing army of non -
professionals located in the US, in France, and increasingly anywhere and
everywhere else.
* Information Brokers
Any "Information Broker" is an "Information Professional", by this
definition. There now are thousands of such "brokers" online, charging
often - high hourly fees for locating strategic information for investors,
business managers, researchers and clients of various types. Yahoo
currently lists over 50 such services, at
http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/
Information/Information_Brokers/
and offline printed commercial directories listing them are multiplying.
One of the largest and oldest information brokerage firms in fact is
French. SVP, the Paris research organization established during the late
1930s by Maurice de Turckheim, and continued today by Brigitte de Gastines
-- http://www.svp.com -- maintains links now to a global "SVP" network,
operating in the US as FindSVP -- http://www.findsvp.com -- and offering a
wide array of information research services.
A broad range of conferences and associations tries bravely to represent
information brokering as an already - unified industry -- from the
"National Online Meeting", held every year in New York City with over 7000
attendees -- http://www.infotoday.com/nom97/nom97.htm -- to Learned
Information Co.(UK)'s various events in Europe and Asia --
http://info.learned.co.uk/ -- such as their "Online Information",
"Internet World", "Corporate Information Strategy", and "Information
Management" conventions. And one suspects that such events still cover
only a small percentage of this very new and relatively unorganized
"information brokering" activity.
* Indexers
A better - organized and certainly older professional group, now
increasingly involved in the Information Profession, is the Indexers.
The print publishing industry has employed indexers for centuries:
individuals who comb through the body of a text looking for key terms --
words and phrases which will have "relevance" for a "reader" -- and who
then arrange these in hierarchical tables which will be easy for readers
to use. A vast array of published "indexes" has developed, performing the
indexing service not just for a particular text but across an often - vast
assortment of texts, arranging them by "author", "title" and "subject" and
otherwise into lists enabling readers to find a particular text.
Professional societies for these activities exist, such as the American
Society of Indexers, http://www.well.com/user/asi/ .
Online the impact of indexers and indexing is being felt heavily now, as,
with the growth of the number of online resources, the task of enabling
"search and retrieval" has become the primary user service. Among the
leaders in Internet investment excitement during the past two years have
been online "indexing" services such as Yahoo, Altavista, Excite, Lycos,
Inktomi and dozens of others. The problem of "indexing the Internet" is
receiving attention in projects in numerous information science and
computer science departments, and "digital library" projects, in various
countries. The old questions of whether and how to arrange human
knowledge, which faced the print publishers of the 16th and 17th
centuries, are being re - opened for the digital age.
* Catalogers
The assembly and publication of vast lists of books, periodicals, and
other items -- held by libraries, museums and other collectors -- might
best be considered an extension of the indexer's activity. Again,
professionals, performing the service of helping people to find
information, increasingly in digital formats and online. The print
information industry and its associated library profession have built
numerous professional "cataloging" organizations, claiming thousands of
members, found in any country which has had a tradition of print
publication or librarianship.
Great numbers of "librarians" and "curators" and "collectors" who are not
formal members of these groups nevertheless are fully engaged in
"indexing" and "cataloging" activities, in addition. Most have had to help
users in the past, at one time or another, with physical indexing and
classification systems, from "card catalogs" to shelf and file
arrangements: explaining, cajoling, finding short cuts, rationalizing. Any
one of them who recently has helped a user to find information online --
certainly directly showing someone "which button to push", but perhaps
also indirectly, by organizing "indexing" and "cataloging" data so that it
is easier to use -- has been working in the new Information Profession.
A less - obvious candidate for Information Professional -- less
obvious than "Indexers" or "Catalogers", whose primary activity is
"information", or than "Information Brokers", who carry the term itself
in their name -- might be lawyers:
* Lawyers (?)
Lawyers are members of an ancient, disciplined, and elaborately -
regulated profession of their own. Their professional activities span a
very wide range. Lawyers may be found negotiating business deals,
resolving family disputes, writing documents, doing research in books and
online, as well as -- by no means their greatest time commitment --
arguing cases in court.
The research part of law -- including the part of it involved in advising
clients -- increasingly is online. A large and increasing part of legal
education consists of mastering digital information search and retrieval
techniques. Attornies in firms devote considerable hours to helping each
other find information online, and quite a number of them even help their
clients with it -- no one law partner has a monopoly on Lexis, Westlaw or
EC database research techniques, much less on all of the new state court
Websites, and few attornies have been able to get all their clients "just
to trust them" without showing clients how to get information themselves.
That information and those techniques increasingly are digital: the
attornies have become Information Professionals -- the legal researcher
today, "must live in two worlds: paper and electronic...", it used to be
a world of "traditional sets of books", but, "that world is gone" (R.
Berring, "Finding the Law", West, 10th ed. pp.4-6).
Beyond lawyers and librarians, then, and the newer set of professionals
working in information who call themselves "brokers", is a large
assortment of people working in and around the traditional print
publishing industries:
* Writers
The variety of writers who now address digital information issues is vast,
from the many authors of "how to" books about word processing or the
Internet to journalists who compose, and mount online, increasingly -
sophisticated pieces which test the limits of the online media.
* Graphic designers
* Editors
In addition, though, the graphic designers and -- above all, perhaps --
the editors who have helped writers in the past in their often - clumsy
and always - impatient efforts at dealing with the public, now gradually
are emerging into the digital realms as well: word processor editing and
Internet spell - checking no longer are sufficient -- Web browser WYSIWYG
/ "What You See Is What You Get" editors are not enough -- in a digital
information world in which corporations spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars designing and promoting their Websites. As the sophistication of
the design, production and publication of digital texts has grown, so has
the tendency for writers to seek out professional help for their
illustrations, formatting, and text editing. Graphic designers and editors
increasingly are learning to use email, and more.
* Publishers
Even if authors themselves do not seek out editors online -- relations
between editors' skills and authors' egos always have been ambivalent --
publishers push them toward each other.
The business model for print publishers in the Digital Age has not yet
been developed -- a matter more of its economics now than of anything else
about it. The new digital publishers who are emerging, however --
econference moderators, webmasters, campus and corporate information
policy committees, pioneering search engine and "push" technology news
firms -- are urging authors toward the professional help of graphic
designers and text editors, just as their predecessor print publishers
did.
Whoever wins the various races to dominate digital publishing which now
are under way -- the old print industry or the new digital publishing
mavericks or some combination of the two -- it seems that publishers, at
least, forever will guarantee a role for graphic designers and text
editors, as well as for authors, as Information Professionals.
* Engineers
It would be unfair, and inaccurate, to minimize the role played by
engineers in helping people to use digital information. Engineers, after
all, invented most of the new techniques and the artifacts of those
techniques.
The engineering orientation, however, is less toward people than it is
toward those techniques and artifacts. For every engineer who has devoted
her or his life to people, there have been a hundred who simply have been
fascinated with the machines and techniques and systems. Bless the
engineers: as with so much in labor - saving and human - helping
technique, digital information would not be here today without them. But
the Information Profession takes engineering's next step, asking, "now
that we have the techniques and the systems, what can we do to help people
to use them?"
* Teachers
Teachers are better at this. Helping students learn techniques is, after
all, their profession. Yet one of the greatest ironies of the digital
information revolution so far has been the lack of attention paid to
training teachers to use it.
Computers have been donated to schools, now, and campuses have been wired
for massive information networks, on every continent in the world, in some
cases for many years. But little effort has been put anywhere into
instilling enthusiasm and skill -- and making available time and resources
-- for the teaching personnel charged with training students in the use of
the new techniques.
In many cases -- perhaps most -- the computers just sit there. The new
Ethernet and ISDN plugs hang on the paint - peeled walls of ancient and
decrepit buildings. There is inadequate plumbing and heating and
electricity, except for the current newly - supplied to the computer power
grid. The underpaid teachers face 37 children every morning, and have no
time to work in new curriculum even if they had personal knowledge of how
to use the new techniques.
Just as engineers are perhaps ill - suited by temperament and training to
aid users of digital information directly, so one of the professions best
- suited for the task -- teachers -- has found itself, for various complex
reasons, largely excluded from the digital learning curve.
A few politicians are coming, at last, to realize this. In his
prescription for the "wiring" of his nation for the digital information
age, the new French Prime Minister declares, "The computer may not
substitute in any way for the teacher... Three types of action are
important and inseparable: generalizing the equipment and the access to
information networks; educating the instructors; and supporting the
creation of appropriate curriculum" (L. Jospin's speech of August 25,
translated and reported in the FYI France ejournal for Sep 15, 1997 --
http://www.fyifrance.com ).
* Artists (!)
One further, perhaps least - likely, group among those currently involved
or in a position to become involved in helping users with digital
information are artists. Digital techniques, like any other, offer
possibilities for self - expression. As the techniques improve, the range
of possibilities for self - expression which they offer not only increases
but enables more subtle variations. Artists are attracted to such variety
and, increasingly, artists are being attracted to digital information
technique and the Internet.
Perhaps artists do not "train users" as directly as teachers do, or might.
But artists do stretch the boundaries of whatever techniques or media they
adopt, almost by definition, and this boundary - stretching teaches the
rest of the users about new possibilities which they themselves might
never have considered.
So, at http://www.hotwired.com/rgb/ , a teacher or an engineer or an
attorney now may find -- or perhaps a Web developer, wanting to make an
easier or more interesting if at times more confusing life for one of
these hard - working Information Professionals, now may find -- "RGB
Gallery", an online running digital information art exhibition, which
features things like,
the UK "Tomato Building" artists' take on "AntiRom": "I consider myself
to be part of that generation that doesn't really read books. I don't
really read stories - I do occasionally, but I always get to that point,
somewhere in the middle, where the author wasn't really paying attention
and you can sort of hear the pen scratching on the paper...",
and, from this same group, "The screen doesn't necessarily have to be a
place; it doesn't have to be a kind of environment that you're within; and
it doesn't have to be a page. It can just be a space where stuff happens,
and things can go in and out of that space, or they can lay on top of that
space. As soon as you try to fit it into a single paradigm, I think it
becomes constraining..."
or artist Erwin Redl's "you me and", a "digital minimal opera in three
acts",
or, currently, New York artist David Opp's "4YB-200": "I figure if it's
beyond my control, I'd rather have fun with it - and enjoy the fact that
it's beyond my control, and not try to force it into doing something..."
* Summary
The traditional differences among these various groups -- information
brokers, indexers, catalogers, lawyers, writers, graphic designers,
editors, publishers, engineers, teachers, and artists -- are many. Their
new similarity is that many of their members now are engaged, indirectly
or very directly, in helping users to find and use digital information.
Does this mean that the Information Profession of the future will be
composed of a combination of all these groups? Are these various
professionals allies, or are they competitors, or will some of them fall
by the wayside -- or under the wheels -- as the digital information
juggernaut trundles by?
The answers to these final questions are not clear yet. For now perhaps it
is enough to note that increasing numbers of information brokers,
indexers, catalogers, lawyers, writers, graphic designers, editors,
publishers, engineers, teachers, and artists -- and others -- are having
more fun, and perhaps even becoming more productive and already earning
more money, helping people to find and use digital information, than they
were when they practiced only their traditional professions. There may be
a budding Information Profession in this similarity alone.
XXX
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic journal,
| published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal,
| experiment, in the creation of large - scale
| "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material
/ \ written by me which appears in FYI France may be
----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so
// \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail
--------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if
// \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my
permission in advance, and share some of the money which
they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their
permission. FYI France archives are at http://infolib.berkeley.edu (search
fyirance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR
econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com , or at
http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html . Suggestions, reactions,
criticisms, praise, and poison-pen letters all will be gratefully received
at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .
Copyright 1992- by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved.
XXX
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